4 October 2016

What’s a model for?

I saw a tweet about a model called Burndown
which defined itself as a solution to the shortcomings of agile development. A
friend lamented that they’re disassociating from the Agile movement because of
the ‘crappy agile’ idea.

I had planned on writing up a similar post
internally where I work but think I’ll also publish it publically. My
motivation isn’t to shame agile, but to show how it can evolve and provide
another example off the beaten track of the normal consulting frameworks.

Not that consultant frameworks are bad by
the way. I’m currently browsing the SAFE book with the intent of cherry picking
out some good ideas and presenting them as options or tools for teams to draw
on.

But this discussion of new frameworks like
Burndown also raises another interesting question for me; How do we assess the
usefulness and validity of frameworks and models?

One way, which I might try with some
components from SAFE is to present them as small and low risk options to
experiment with, another more common path is to execute on an “Agile Transformation.”

There are strengths and weaknesses to both
of these approaches, but there is also still a need to objective evaluation of
their usefulness, both before and after trying the tools they describe.